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A month or so back I published a list of ten social media power influencers. I've been developing the research since then and now have about 150 social media writers and experts in my power list. Below are the top 50.

The list was compiled using PeekYou's social pull metric - which, roughly speaking, measures the number of people in your second degree networks who are identifiable and active (see an explanation and some of the criticism of it in this post about the top 10 women influencers).

Last time out there was criticism of the metric - i.e.the list does not depict influence, at best it shows only popularity. I know PeekYou are adapting the algorithm behind their metrics so this list will change in a few week's time. However this is my list, as of today, the list I am using for the study that I explain briefly below.

In addition I don't think you can separate popularity from influence in this new media world. To suggest that one is better than the other or to suggest that popularity does not reflect influence seems to me a tricky claim.

I have excluded from this list writers where we have not been able to identify a minimum of 50% of followers as real people. This seemed like a reasonable response to the quality criticism. Everyone on the list has followers who we can identify more often than not, and their followers' followers similarly have real identities.

This time round the list also excluded people who are only curating content. All the people on this list create content, and the reason is I needed content to analyze. Why?

Because I am doing a study of what the top social media influencers say - asking, what do they actually talk about?

The study is supported by PeekYou who have given me free access to their software, Leximancer, who have allowed me to use their semantic analysis platform for free, and Global Dawn who have met some of my wages while I do the work. Thanks to all.

That analysis is nearly ready - the report is almost done and it's with an infographic's specialist so we can do the visualisations before publishing.

In the study I have taken 40 of the top 100 to analyse and collated their blog material up to a total of 50,000 words each dating from December 2011 backwards.

I'll hopefully have some results ready next week or the week after.

Finally this list excludes people who have very close cross-over, i.e. writers who, by and large, follow people who follow them.

I have also extended the scope of the list by including people whose mission is clearly social media marketing and not just social media as a topic.

Here are fifty social media writers who have very substantial online followings.

Note how over the course of 6 writers we've already descended from 3,000 to 2,000. The next 14 all fit into the 1,000 + band. So there are fewer people in this exceptionally well connected band than in the one to come.